Update! There's a new way to do this - read my latest post to find out how. Two or three years ago, I was contacted by a recruiter from Google. They wanted to know if I'd be interested in working for the advertising giant. We played the usual game of dancing around salary and schedules, when he dropped the bombshell - they were looking for people to work on Google+. I asked the recruiter if he'd seen my G+ profile. At the time, it had this childish scrawl all over it. We mutually…
Continue reading →
My current ISP is Virgin Media. They get a lot of stick for being a bit useless - but I can't fault the speed of my domestic connection. They recently upgraded me for free to 152Mbps downsteam (and a less impressive 12Mbps up). As part of this upgrade, they sent me an email stating: now that your broadband has been supercharged, on the house, why not put it to the test? You've got the UK's fastest widely available broadband speed which is 12x faster than Sky and BT's regular broadband^, so …
Continue reading →
So, I've submitted my first patch to the Linux Kernel! It's trivial set of documentation improvements - mostly done so I could see if I've got everything set up correctly. This blog post is more of an aide memoire than a fool proof guide - I hope future me finds it useful! Install and Configure git I'll leave you to figure out how to install git on your system - one thing you will need to is run this command once you've finished setting it up. git config --global format.signoff true …
Continue reading →
I looked at my Solar Generation meter and winked. My new Google Glass snapped this picture 116 days ago, on the darkest day of the year, we had our solar panels installed. They have just ticked over the 1MWh mark. The average British house uses about 10kWh a day. By our estimates, our house uses 8.5kWh - thanks to LED lighting, a new TV, and efficient computers. Basically, at this point in the year we're already generating more energy than we use and have, on average, completely offset…
Continue reading →
This is a necropost - resurrected from the now defunct blog of a previous employer. Well, I've had Google Glass for all of 30 minutes - so I thought I'd give you my first impressions. No, I haven't read the manual. The first thing to note is that it is really well packaged. Everything from the USB cable to the bundled sunglasses are held together beautifully. As someone who doesn't wear glasses, I found them fairly light and not too intrusive. The screen sits slightly above my line of site…
Continue reading →
As part of my "National Hack The Government" win, I was awarded 100 DogeCoin! Although not my first foray into the exciting world of CryptoCurrencies, I'd never received DogeCoin before. I decided to set up an online wallet to temporarily store my loot while investigating more secure options. More or less at random, I went with DogeAPI.com. After registering, I received this email. Let's take a look at the code behind it... <h1>Thanks for registering with DogeAPI.com, edent!</h1>…
Continue reading →
I'm a big fan of the EU. For all its flaws, it has kept the peace for decades. Not only does it prevent physical wars - but it reduces the harm caused by companies warring against each other. Like most legislatures, it works on glacial timelines. Not only tackling the problems of the past, but also assuming the future is static. In the fast moving technology industry, this has been a mixed blessing. Mandating the need for a physical SIM and ensuring phones can be unlocked has kept EU…
Continue reading →
We're all changing our passwords in the light of Heartbleed, right? Good! If you are a developer or designer, I want to explain to you exactly how not to create a password dialogue box for your users. We're all used to seeing this: Input password: Change Password This is incorrect! Why? Because it leads to this? Input password: Change Password ERROR! Your password must be longer than 7 characters! Ok! Ok! I'll enter in a longer password. Input password: Change Password ERROR! …
Continue reading →
Rewired State have just announced "End Of The World Hack" We know the earth is about to be bombarded with solar flares and magnetic storms of varying ferocity on July 4th, 5th and 6th 2014, by which time the infrastructure of the energy and communications networks will have been completely decimated across the entire planet. You have 48 hours to best prepare the human race for survival, through the chaos, and on to a successful future. After which time there will be no electricity and no…
Continue reading →
Currently, I have four ways to monitor the total power generated by my solar panels. Check the meter. This is the most accurate way - but it is located inside a cupboard. Read the total from the Fronius API. Unfortunately, this rounds off to the nearest kWh, so isn't brilliantly accurate. Use the Fronius API to check the power being generated every minute, then convert to kWh. That seems accurate, but show discrepancies when compared with... Solar.web takes a reading every…
Continue reading →
As some of you may know, I'm writing a series of short stories to help young people learn how to code. One of the things I wanted to do was introduce the concept of using RESTful APIs. It's so powerful to show people that they can retrieve information from the Internet and then manipulate it in software. Originally, I had wanted to use Twitter and Flickr as examples - they're both fairly well known and have interesting content. The only problem is that both require authentication. I'm an…
Continue reading →
It's not often that you get to play with a computer which is smaller than its own plug! This is the Cubox from Solid-Run. An impossibly tiny PC which is pitched at the hobbyist and developer market. This will be a quick review based on half a day of mucking about with it. A Warning This is a toy for geeks. As such, there's lots of wandering around unmaintained Wikis, reading out-of-date forum posts, and fiddling on the command line to get this thing running. While the Cubox isn't aimed …
Continue reading →
